Vera Vance: Comics Star

by Claudia Mills

  For a second no one said anything.

  Then Vera sprang from her sitting position, angrier than she had ever been at anybody in her whole entire life.

  “That’s mean! It’s not funny! It’s not funny at all! It’s nothing but mean, mean, mean, mean, MEAN!”

  So much for constructive criticism.

  So much for starting with something positive.

  So much for making a suggestion and not a statement.

  Vera didn’t care.

  Now Nixie was on her feet, too.

  “You’re just jealous because Boogie is funnier than you are, and Nolan is smarter than you are. They’re funnier and smarter than you’ll ever be!”

  “Girls!” Buzz-Bee interrupted, sounding agitated herself. “Sit down, both of you. Let Brian and me handle this.”

  Vera stole a glance at Boogie and Nolan. Boogie wasn’t crying, but his cheeks were bright red. Nolan’s lips were pressed tightly together as if he was trying hard not to speak. Vera bet he could think of 10,000 choice facts to share with James right now.

  For a moment the whole camp was silent.

  Then Buzz-Bee said, “James, this ‘comic’ of yours…”

  With all eyes on him, James flushed almost as red as Boogie. “You’re the ones who said we should observe people to get ideas! I was trying to be funny!”

  “There’s a difference,” Buzz-Bee said, “between funny and mean.”

  It was the same thing Vera had just said. But what made them different? She didn’t think her Buzz-Bee nickname was mean. Was it? If she had drawn the cartoon of Buzz-Bee that had popped into her head on the first day of camp, with Buzz-Bee’s head extra-round like a bowling ball and her hair extra-short, would that have been mean?

  “But Boogie is a big klutz! He even says that he is! He did ruin their comic! That really happened! Nolan does know facts about everything! He’s the one who told me how to spell the name of that stupid gland. How can something be mean if it’s true?”

  “There’s a difference,” Buzz-Bee said, “between saying what’s true and saying it in a way that’s kind. And I think you’d have to admit your comic strays considerably far from the truth. Neither Nolan nor Boogie ever said the exact words you put in your speech bubbles. They wouldn’t have. And you knew that.”

  Now James looked close to tears himself. “Comics are supposed to be exaggerated! That’s what makes them funny!”

  Vera almost felt sorry for him, but if he had really thought his comic was perfectly fine, he wouldn’t have covered it up every time Brian and Buzz-Bee came by their table. If he had truly thought it was a friendly joke, he would have let Nolan and Boogie see it, too, so they could have cracked up together.

  “Look,” Brian cut in. “Bee and I messed up on this one. We’re not big on rules, as you know. Our only goal was to get you kids fired up about comics, the thing in the world both of us love best. We should have had a rule against making comics about other kids in the camp. Boogie and Nolan, we’re sorry.”

  Would Brian make James apologize to Boogie and Nolan, too?

  He didn’t. Anyway, Vera always thought it was pointless when grown-ups made kids say I’m sorry when they didn’t mean it.

  “We still have five more comics to critique,” Brian said. “We’ll do them first thing tomorrow, when we’re fresh. That’s it for today, guys. I’m done.”

  The campers stayed quiet as they returned to their tables for free time.

  Then James cleared his throat. “Nolan? Boogie?” he said, avoiding their eyes. “If my comic was mean, I’m sorry, okay?”

  “Okay,” Nolan said quietly.

  “Sure,” Boogie agreed.

  “But…you guys are funny,” James added.

  It was a pretty terrible apology, Vera decided, one of the worst she’d ever heard. The strange thing was: Boogie and Nolan were funny, Boogie always dropping things, Nolan with his facts that were boring sometimes. But they were even funnier because they were best friends who were completely opposite from each other.

  Even in this last week of comics camp, there was so much Vera still didn’t understand about comics.

  nine

  When the last five comics were critiqued in camp on Tuesday, everyone liked Nixie’s. Vera felt bad that one person said her favorite part was that the school was called Mistress Barker’s Bow-Wow Academy and that the street was called Wag-a-Tail Lane. Nixie didn’t seem to mind.

  During drawing time after the critiques, James just sat and sulked. But on Wednesday, he told the others he was making a brand-new comic about a turtle whose superpower was moving so slowly he went backward in time.

  “You’re never going to get a page finished in time for Brian and Bee to send to comic-con,” Harper pointed out. “They’re collecting them in an hour.”

  James shrugged. “So? This isn’t school. It’s after school. It’s just a dumb place for kids to go while their parents are at work. It’s not like the stuff we do here matters.”

  Well, Vera thought, it did matter if you hurt somebody else’s feelings while you were doing it.

  “Does your turtle have a name?” Boogie asked. It was the first time any of them, except for Harper, had spoken to James since Monday.

  James shrugged again. Apparently naming the comic-book character in your dumb after-school camp was another thing that didn’t matter.

  “You could call him Backwards Benny,” Boogie suggested.

  “Hey! That’s a great name!” James gave Boogie a grin that was a smile, not a smirk.

  “Did you know that turtles—” Nolan began, and then broke off.

  “That turtles what?” James asked.

  “Boring turtle fact,” Nolan said quietly.

  James flushed. “That turtles what?” he asked again. “Come on, just tell us.”

  “That turtles have been around for over two hundred million years.” Nolan said it in a flat, expressionless voice; Vera could tell James’s mockery still stung. Then his face lit up in his usual excited-lightbulb way. “Turtles have been around since the time of the dinosaurs!”

  “So if Backwards Benny went back to dinosaur time,” James said, “he could meet his own great-great-great-great-add-a-million-greats-turtle-grandfather.”

  “Yup,” Nolan replied.

  “Cool!” James picked up his pencil to draw some more.

  “Speaking of cool,” Boogie said, “are any of you going to wear costumes to comic-con on Friday? All I have is an old Superman cape from when I was, like, three or something. I asked my mother if she could make me a giant-piece-of-toast costume, and she said, ‘You’re kidding, right?’ ”

  “I’m going to wear a princess costume,” Harper announced. “In honor of Princess Esmeralda of Esmer. Besides, it’s an amazing princess dress, and there aren’t a lot of places I can wear it to now that I’m not a little kid anymore.”

  “I’m not a costume person,” Nolan said, unsurprisingly.

  “I’d rather just look at everyone else,” Nixie said.

  James nodded his agreement.

  The others looked over at Vera, the only one who hadn’t spoken. She hadn’t told anyone yet that she wasn’t going to comic-con, not even Nixie. It would make it too real to say it out loud. But comic-con was just two days away. She might as well blurt it out now and get it over with.

  “I’m not going.”

  Five pairs of eyes stared at her.

  “My mother said no.”

  Five faces looked sympathetic. Vera hadn’t expected Harper or James to care either way, but James rolled his eyes in a friendly way, as if to say, Parents! Harper gave Vera a small, sad smile.

  “What if Brian and Bee talked to her?” Nolan asked. Vera could have guessed he’d be the first one, faced with her problem, to try to think of a solution.

  Vera shook her head.r />
  “What if—what if—well, what if…” Boogie was obviously stuck on how to finish the sentence.

  Nixie raised her chin, clearly not ready to give up yet. “What if you talked to her?”

  “I already did.”

  “What if you talked to her again? You have to stand up for yourself when there’s something you really, really, REALLY want.”

  Vera didn’t bother answering that one. She knew Nixie wanted to help, but Nixie’s own begging and pleading had never yet convinced Nixie’s parents to let her get a dog.

  Anyway, Vera was hopeless at standing up for herself. She hadn’t been able to make herself tell Nixie she didn’t want to work together on the dog comic. She’d still be drawing Sir Great the Great Dane and Itty-Bitty the Chihuahua if Nixie hadn’t stumbled upon Vera’s hidden drawings and told her she should make Little Spoon her big camp project.

  Well, maybe she had stood up to James yesterday. But that didn’t count. It was easier to stand up for someone other than herself. And it was easier to stand up to someone other than her mom.

  When it was time for a snack break, Nixie motioned to Vera to stay behind at the worktable while the other four jumped up to get cheddar cheese slices and apple wedges.

  “What if I talked to your mother?” Nixie persisted.

  This was the most preposterous plan yet, but Vera loved Nixie for offering it.

  “Oh, Nixie.” Vera couldn’t keep the despair out of her voice. “My mother isn’t going to listen to you, or me, or the teachers, or anybody.”

  Nixie sighed. “You need a superhero.”

  Vera sighed. “Right.”

  If only Little Spoon was real instead of made up by Vera, Little Spoon could save her somehow.

  Then and there, just like that, Vera had an idea. It might not be a good idea. It might be the most terrible idea in the history of the world. But it was all she had.

  * * *

  That evening Vera’s mother tried a new recipe—chicken cooked with a rice-shaped pasta called orzo, simmered together with chicken broth, lemons, and Kalamata olives. The chicken-orzo-lemon-olive dish turned out to be delicious.

  “Yum!” Vera said, when she had eaten every bite.

  Her mother gave a happy laugh. “I know!” she agreed. “And it was ridiculously easy, too.”

  Vera practiced piano extra-long just because the Mozart sonata she was learning was so beautiful she wanted to make every note of it beautiful, too.

  “That piece is coming along so nicely,” Vera’s mother told her as they climbed into Vera’s bed for the next chapters of A Wrinkle in Time. Vera felt herself glowing from her mother’s praise, even if her mother was never going to sound proud and happy like that about making a comic.

  When they finished the chapter where Meg rescues her missing father from imprisonment in a transparent column and rushes into his protective arms, Vera’s throat had a lump in it so big she could hardly swallow.

  “I wish…” she began. She wanted to say, I wish my father could come back, but the words couldn’t get past the lump blocking them.

  “I know,” her mother said softly. “I still miss him every single day. And then every single day I’m so grateful I have you.”

  Vera snuggled closer to her mother.

  If Nixie had been there, Nixie would have poked Vera, and the poke would have meant, Ask her again about comic-con! Ask her right now! But the moment was too special and perfect for Vera to ask for anything more.

  After her mother had tucked her in, however, Vera turned the light back on and slipped her Little Spoon comic out from beneath her pillow. Little Spoon had already rescued everyone in the spoon drawer from the snooty lady who was going to throw the spoons away and get newer, shinier, fancier ones.

  While the other spoons were asleep, Little Spoon, Plastic Spoon, and Chopsticks had polished the rest of the spoons, even Big Spoon, with special polish Little Spoon had made from a secret formula; then Plastic Spoon and Chopsticks polished Little Spoon, too. The next morning the spoons looked so dazzlingly bright and gleamingly shiny that Lady Snobbarella had said, “Oh, you beautiful spoons! How could I ever have thought of getting rid of you! I’m going to keep you forever!” And Big Spoon said, “Little Spoon, I’m so proud of you!”

  Now there was going to be a great big celebration of all the spoons in all the drawers in all the houses in the whole neighborhood. It was called Spoonic-Con. Every single spoon was going to Spoonic-Con, except for one.

  Big Spoon had said Little Spoon couldn’t go. Big Spoon said Spoonic-Con would be too crowded, too noisy, too confusing. She said there would be a lot of very weird spoons there, spoons covered with crazy designs and strange pictures. She said Spoonic-Con would be too overwhelming for a spoon as small as Little Spoon.

  Vera worked hard on the final picture of Little Spoon alone in the empty silverware drawer, abandoned by the other spoons who had raced merrily off to Spoonic-Con, forgetting all about her. Tears dripped down Little Spoon’s face, leaving spots of rust where they fell onto her handle.

  It was the saddest picture Vera had ever drawn.

  She slipped out of bed, glad her mother’s bedroom door was already closed, and tiptoed down the stairs. She left The Secret Life of Little Spoon on the kitchen counter next to the coffeemaker where her mother made her first cup of coffee every morning without fail. Then she crept back up to bed again.

  What if her mother didn’t bother to read it and, mildly annoyed at finding school stuff where it wasn’t supposed to be, just tucked it into Vera’s backpack?

  If she did start to read it, what if she flipped through the first few pages and didn’t get all the way to the end?

  If she did get all the way to the end, what if it hurt her feelings, the way James’s comic had hurt Nolan and Boogie?

  Or…would it…could it…make her change her mind?

  ten

  The next morning, at seven o’clock, Vera’s mother poked her head into Vera’s room to see if she was awake, the way she always did on school days. “Rise and shine!” she said in the partly cheery, partly stressed voice she had on busy mornings.

  Had she seen Little Spoon on the counter?

  Had she read it?

  Or not?

  As soon as Vera came into the kitchen for breakfast, dressed and ready for school, she couldn’t keep her eyes from straying to the counter by the coffeemaker. The pile of drawings had disappeared.

  “It’s in your backpack,” Vera’s mother said briskly. “I figured you’d need it for camp.”

  Vera thought her mother’s lips quivered as she turned to the stove to dish up the scrambled eggs onto two plates. Was her mother hurt? Or angry? Or both? She certainly wasn’t handing Vera a signed permission form for comic-con to tuck in her backpack next to her comic.

  “Have a good day,” her mother told her, as she pulled up in front of the elementary school to drop Vera off. She leaned over to give Vera a kiss the same way she always did.

  “Bye,” Vera said. She imagined her voice coming out in tiny lettering inside a tiny speech bubble.

  So that was that.

  * * *

  At school, one look at Vera’s unsmiling face must have let Nixie know Vera’s mother hadn’t changed her mind. At lunch, Nixie clearly did her best to avoid any mention of camp, comics, or comic-con, letting the other girls at the table talk about their favorite cat videos instead.

  “We can go bowling again this weekend if you want,” Nixie said in a rush, as she and Vera headed outside for lunch recess, trailing behind the others. Nixie might as well have added, So you’ll have at least something to look forward to since you can’t go to comic-con.

  “Thanks,” Vera said politely. “That would be nice.”

  “Are you sure it wouldn’t help if—” Nixie began.

  Vera cut her off. “I’m
sure.”

  At camp Brian and Buzz-Bee spent the first half hour whipping everyone else into a frenzy of excitement about comic-con. Why had Vera even bothered to come to camp today, if she was the only one left out of everything? Of course, with her mother at her office working, there was nowhere else for her to go. She was relieved when Colleen beckoned her over to help staple a big stack of pamphlets for some future after-school programs. At least Colleen seemed to understand how Vera felt.

  Finally Brian said, “Okay! I can tell everyone’s too wound up to do any real work this afternoon, so…movie time!”

  The campers gathered in the storytelling area, and Superman began to play. Great. When Vera’s mother came to pick her up, she’d find everyone staring at the movie projected onto the wall, looking “slack jawed and vacant eyed,” as she liked to say, the final proof that comics camp and all comics everywhere were a great big waste of time and money.

  Sure enough, when Vera’s mom slipped into the room an hour later, most of the campers were sprawled on the floor in just the kind of sloppy posture her mother hated most. Vera glanced at the clock on the wall. Her mother was early.

  Good-bye forever, comics camp.

  Slowly Vera got up to leave. Her mother was already deep in conversation with Colleen. Then Buzz-Bee went over to join them.

  Vera allowed herself one last desperate stab of hope. Maybe Buzz-Bee could convince her mother? Vera held back, just in case, hardly daring to let herself breathe.

  Now Colleen was digging through her thick camp folder and pulling out a piece of paper to hand to Vera’s mother.

  Now Vera’s mother was writing something on it.

  Vera couldn’t make herself wait any longer.

  As she approached the three of them, her mother met her eyes. She gave Vera one small nod, followed by a tremulous smile. Then Vera flung her arms around her mother’s waist and held on tight.